I think the US Digital Service is a great initiative and I'll consider taking a tour myself in the future. That said, I don't really like these kinds of thinkers who believe the only companies that are doing something "that matters" are non-profits working directly on a specific problem in healthcare or poverty.
I have yet to work for a company, from non-profit internet companies to product-oriented SaaS startup powerhouses, that didn't enable some great initiative or program that could not have existed without that company creating and improving their product and making it accessible, via availability or cost, to the non-profit that needed to worry about doing their actual work.
Take the author's old company, Google, for example. They don't do anything "that matters"? I assure you there are many non-profits, charities, and important initiatives around the world that would have a much harder time if they didn't benefit from technologies that Google ushered in to the world. Mass, cheap communication via free email that is highly-available and untied from specific ISPs. Free, globally available document storage to safely store records and share documents across the globe, saving on the cost of having an entire department to handle the same task.
These products may seem frivolous and unnecessary to us, because we can (maybe) live without them. But there are organizations directly doing important, charitable work that can't. Saying product companies that don't directly work on the world's poverty, social, or health (etc.) problems are not working on "things that matter" is just pretentious, in my opinion.
All that said, the author has the right to feel the way he feels and work wherever and on whatever he wants to. Just don't tell everyone else what they do doesn't really matter.
> Saying profit-making companies are inherently not working on "things that matter" is just pretentious, in my opinion.
Where do you believe he said that?
The things he called out were "helping rich people find taxis more easily, selling ads more effectively, or building sexting apps". He also said that he believed "the advancing state of computing technology has overall benefitted peoples’ lives".
So I think you're mainly arguing against a straw man here.
I had a feeling that sentence was going to be taken apart and thought I should change it, but I didn't have the words at the time. By "profit-making companies", I mean companies that work on products for people that are not directly designed to help an impoverished people or solve a health or social problem. That is being implied here. He calls out the "sexting apps" directly, but most of the article is about him reconnecting with his friends at Google and the conclusion seems driven from that interaction.
Again, I think you're arguing against something that is not actually in the article. I read him as pointing at ends of a continuum, and I think you're falsely constructing a dichotomy out of that.
He says quite clearly: "I’m still a believer in technology, particularly in the web platform, as a force for good." He also is explicit that for himself he wants something farther toward the clear-impact end of the spectrum: "I needed to redirect my energies towards problems that society wasn’t adequately addressing."
Forgive me, but you're kind of reframing his remarks a bit. For example, you cut off the second part of this sentence:
"Even though I’m still a believer in technology, particularly in the web platform, as a force for good, society needs more people working directly on problems that matter."
While the author acknowledges in the abstract that the internet has improved people's lives, I still see the tone implying we should all be directly working on more worthy causes if we really want to be doing stuff that "matters".
> While the author acknowledges in the abstract that the internet has improved people's lives, I still see the tone implying we should all be directly working on more worthy causes if we really want to be doing stuff that "matters".
Er, no. Again, you are engaging in binary thinking not warranted by what was actually said. He doesn't say or imply "we should all" be doing any one thing, he very directly says that "society needs more people working directly on problems that matter."
Note, particularly "more people" (not "we...all" as you would present it), and "directly". That is, there are plenty of things that indirectly matter, and plenty of people working on those, but, in the author's view, not enough people working directly on certain important applications.
The judgement you are reading into it that everyone not working in certain preferred areas is doing something less-than-ideal and not doing stuff that matters is simply nowhere in the text.
> "society needs more people working directly on problems that matter"
This does not imply that "we should al be working directly on more worthy causes". My impression was that the author was simply making an observation about the relative distribution of labor (specifically: that there are not enough people working directly on causes that "matter"), which should by no means be reduced to the absurd by saying that all people should be working on those causes.
I have yet to work for a company, from non-profit internet companies to product-oriented SaaS startup powerhouses, that didn't enable some great initiative or program that could not have existed without that company creating and improving their product and making it accessible, via availability or cost, to the non-profit that needed to worry about doing their actual work.
Take the author's old company, Google, for example. They don't do anything "that matters"? I assure you there are many non-profits, charities, and important initiatives around the world that would have a much harder time if they didn't benefit from technologies that Google ushered in to the world. Mass, cheap communication via free email that is highly-available and untied from specific ISPs. Free, globally available document storage to safely store records and share documents across the globe, saving on the cost of having an entire department to handle the same task.
These products may seem frivolous and unnecessary to us, because we can (maybe) live without them. But there are organizations directly doing important, charitable work that can't. Saying product companies that don't directly work on the world's poverty, social, or health (etc.) problems are not working on "things that matter" is just pretentious, in my opinion.
All that said, the author has the right to feel the way he feels and work wherever and on whatever he wants to. Just don't tell everyone else what they do doesn't really matter.
But that's just my two cents =)